How Evangelicals Justify Economic Inequality

By Ross Pomeroy | October 29, 2025 | 1:32pm

Photo by Justin Brackett

Economy Evangelical Christianity

How Evangelicals Justify Economic Inequality

Jesus Christ’s teachings were decidedly egalitarian. He preached equality and universal love while shunning wealth.

If you’re one of the 30 to 78 million evangelicals in the United States, you might not think this.

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“Conservative evangelical Protestantism… is associated with attitudes that favor the status quo of inequality,” writes Dawson P. R. Vosburg, a PhD candidate in sociology at the Ohio State University.

These attitudes manifest in a variety of ways. Evangelical televangelists enrich themselves through donations from their faithful then splurge on houses, cars, and private jets. Congregations erect gaudy megachurches replete with fancy sound systems, multicamera projectors, and professional musical entertainment. Evangelicals themselves voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who adorns his abodes in gold while championing policies that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.

Evangelicals hold the Bible as the ultimate, inspired, and authoritative revelation from God and, when “born-again,” devote themselves to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. How then do these folks reconcile worshipping wealth with the Bible’s egalitarian message?

To find out, Vosburg extensively analyzed ten year’s worth of sermons at a large and growing Midwestern evangelical megachurch, which he anonymized as “New River.”

“New River’s approach to inequality was one of clear justification of the status quo, centered on the justification of wealth accumulation and the minimization of inequality’s moral importance,” he found.

New River’s pastors sold this seemingly un-Christ-like point of view through four key themes: preaching against “rich shaming”; minimizing inequality within the U.S. by proclaiming that America’s impoverished aren’t really “poor”; interpreting the Bible as castigating “spiritual” poverty rather than material wealth; and arguing that God owns everything and thus decides who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t.

In railing against rich shaming, New River’s head pastor, Pastor Tray, said in one sermon, “What other blessing does God give some people in the church that makes the person receiving the blessing almost feel like they’ve got to shrink back into the shadows and apologize for what God has given them, or even be embarrassed because of what God has given them?”

In another sermon, he said of wealth, “[God] wants you to enjoy it. He wants you to appreciate it. He loves to see His children blessed. Just like this dad of two loves to see my kids blessed …. God loves to see his kids blessed.”

As New River’s pastors extolled wealth, they told their followers that being poor in the United States isn’t so bad.

“Listen, if you don’t have a home, you know where to go every single day to receive a free meal, a warm meal, a clean shower, a hot shower, clean clothes. There’s churches like ours all over this city and people all over this city that give to serve you and show up to do our best to meet your needs… Even those with the least compared to some of the people on the planet are overwhelmingly and abundantly blessed.”

Many passages in the Bible encourage helping the poor, but New River’s pastor frequently interpreted “poor” in the spiritual sense rather than the material. God wants his followers to help and guide those poor in spirit, who lack faith, not necessarily those lacking material resources.

But Vosburg noted that New River’s preachers didn’t always take a spiritual interpretation of economic matters. Parishioners were regularly reminded to give at least 10 percent of their income to the church as a tithe.

“According to Pastor Tray, ‘you become the most insulated and protected person on the planet by God when you tithe.’” Vosburg described.

Lastly, Vosburg noticed New River’s pastors rationalizing inequality by arguing that God owns everything and thus dictates the allocation of material riches.

“What you have was given to you by God, which means that ultimately inequality is the result of God’s direct action and is thus not unjust,” he paraphrased. “Questioning both the distribution of resources and what the rich do with their resources is condemned on the basis that God is the one who owns and distributed the resources.”

New River’s laissez faire approach to inequality and friendliness toward wealth may have more cynical underpinnings.

“The pressures of voluntary organization dependent on donations gives an advantage to churches that welcome the rich without criticism of their wealth,” Vosburg commented.

Catering to the rich and powerful can pay off, even from the pulpit.